In "The House with the Clock in its Walls," young Lewis Barnavelt comes to live with his uncle Jonathan, a warlock, in the house after his parents die and becomes friends with the neighbor, a good witch.

Later, the trio finds out an old wizard who once lived in the house had placed a clock in its walls, counting down to the next cosmic alignment that will end the world. They have to deal with that while an undead sorceress stalks them.

Dick Strader, a former educator and storyteller for schools in Marshall and Battle Creek, knows that story well.

For decades, he played one of the book's main characters, Uncle Jonathan, on school tours of locations in Bellairs' New Zebedee books that featured actors at the stops.

Bellairs put real places in Marshall into his books, often changing little more than their names. The house with the clock in its walls, for instance, was based on what's known as the Cronin mansion.

The dining room table of the Cronin House is believed to be a Berkey and Gay piece made in Grand Rapids in the late 1800s and the original gas chandeliers were sold by the former owner, but its replacement is French from the late 1800s. Stephanie Parshall/For The Enquirer

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The John Bellairs walking tour ran for about 20 years, Strader said, after starting in the 1980s. The late Ann La Pietra, the owner of the former Kids' Place bookstore, came up with the idea.

There are almost 10 actors on the tour. Marsha Lambert, another Marshall storyteller who worked in the schools, portrayed the Figure in the Shadows, from the book of the same name, stationed at the Masonic Temple in Marshall.

"She always painted her face white and purple, she wore this cape," Strader said. "In fact, the police stopped and wanted to know what she was doing. After that, we warned them."

Strader stood in front of the Cronin house with a fake fat stomach, chewing on a pipe, talking about adventures with his nephew Lewis and defeating the evil sorcerers who wanted to destroy the world.

Kids from fourth and fifth grades at Marshall and Battle Creek schools made the trip annually.

"I would take them on kind of a mental trip through the house and took them into the library where all of my magic books were stored, then told them about the secret passage between the library and the kitchen," Strader said. "There actually is a passageway there."

The kids had to imagine the scenes Strader described to them since they couldn't actually go in the Cronin place. It wasn't because the owners didn't like them, though.

Virginia and Elizabeth Cronin, sisters, never married and lived in the house together. Elizabeth died in 1989 and Virginia in 2002, ending the family's presence in the house that lasted since it was built for merchant Jeremiah Cronin in 1873.

Strader said he had tea with the sisters when discussing the plans for the tour, and said the women loved books and children, even if they kept a low profile.

In this 1991 photograph, Dick Strader portrays Uncle Jonathan from "The House with a Clock in its Walls."(Photo: Enquirer file/Willard Library)

The sisters also, Strader said, liked the idea of their house being featured in the odd horror books.

"They didn’t want to have any notoriety about that, but I think that they were secretly very pleased," Strader said.

Strader said the combination of youth and the supernatural were the key to understanding Bellairs.

"There’s so much, though, about the occult and mystery and magic and all of that that appeals to kids," Strader said. "His books just appeal to that sense."

"I don’t want to say it’s by kids for kids, but it’s very much something that appeals to anybody who kind of likes that supernatural mystery part of life," said Seemann, who is one of the people who runs bellairsia.com. The site has information, blogs and forums for talking about Bellairs' works and the continuation books written by Brad Strickland.

Bellairs once said he wrote about the things that he wished happened to him as a boy, Seemann said. Growing up in Marshall probably influenced that.

"The town I grew up in, I think back on it and think, yeah, there were some strange buildings," said Seemann, who now lives in Austin, Texas. "There were some strange people around. I can imagine how Marshall would’ve worked on the imagination of anybody."

If the new film happens, though, it won't be the first adaptation of "The House with a Clock in its Walls."

In 1979, Vincent Price hosted the CBS special "Once Upon a Midnight Scary," an anthology featuring the Bellairs story in its tales.

This also isn't the first time talk of a new movie has come around, Seemann said.

"People get excited, and then news sort of wanes off, and you kind of forget about it," Seemann said. "When I was looking at the news (of the new movie), I was thinking, 'Well, when was it actually going to become a movie?' It was 2011. Six years."

Bellairs, Seemann said, was ahead of his time in some ways, writing supernatural fiction for young readers. He's seen the Marshall native's influence in modern work that uses those themes, and he's hopeful about the movie.

Tour the homes

The next Marshall Historic Home Tour, Sept. 9 and 10, will feature more than 20 locations, including the Cronin house at 407 N. Madison St. For more information, go to marshallhistoricalsociety.org or call 781-8455.